Famous essay (more accurately, a collection of quotes) by
EwDijkstra. Rather controversial and inflammatory; more so when it was written. The targets of Dijkstra's barbs -- popular industrial languages at the time such as FORTRAN, COBOL, and BASIC -- are far less widely used today, although BASIC is still widely used if you count
VisualBasic.
Also contains lots of flames for
IbmCorporation, which in the 70s had a reputation and market position even greater than that of
MicroSoft today.
Also contains lots of useful bits of advice.
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/ewd498.html
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